Misti Leon doesn’t check the weather or listen to the news when it’s hot outside. “This time of year is very difficult for me,” Leon says. Temperatures have touched the triple digits in many parts of the U.S. this summer, breaking longstanding heat records; and June and July were both the third warmest on record since 1850.

She avoids any mention of the term heat dome, which describes a weather phenomenon when the atmosphere traps hot air, raising temperatures. It was during a record-breaking heat dome in Washington in 2021, when temperatures climbed up to 108°F, that Misti lost her mom, Juliana Leon.

Julie, as everyone called her, was driving home from a doctor’s appointment on June 28, 2021 with the windows rolled down when the heat began to hit her. She pulled off the highway onto a r

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